Mary Ann Brigham was born on December 6, 1829 at Westboro, Massachussets, the daughter of Dexter and Mary Ann (Gould) Brigham. The first of her ancestors in this country is thought to have been Thomas Brigham who came from London to New England in 1635.
Mary Brigham was educated at Mount Holyoke Seminary.
For some years Mary Brigham taught a private school in her father's house in Westboro, and from 1855 to 1858 instructed at Mount Holyoke. For the next five years she was principal of Ingham University at Leroy, New York, and from 1863 until her death in 1889 she was associate principal with Dr. Charles E. West at Brooklyn Heights Seminary.
She was chosen to be the first president of Mount Holyoke College after the change from a seminary to an institution of the standing of the other women's colleges in the East, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley, but she was killed in a railroad wreck near New Haven two months before she was to have taken office.
On 29 June 1889, as she was traveling from New York to South Hadley, Massachusetts to assume her post, the train crashed at New Haven, Connecticut.
Mary Brigham had done much to make Brooklyn Heights Seminary, where she had charge of the senior department, a notable school, and it was in recognition of these qualities that she was called to Mount Holyoke. She had been offered the presidency of Wellesley as well as professorships at Smith, Wellesley, and other colleges. Mary Brigham Cottage, one of the dormitories at Mount Holyoke, was named in her honor.
Mary Brigham was a woman of fine personality, both as a teacher and as a friend, with unusual executive ability and scholarship.
